


Don't Go Away Heartbroken

by der_tanzer



Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-24
Updated: 2011-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-19 18:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/der_tanzer/pseuds/der_tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was adept at slipping away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Go Away Heartbroken

**Author's Note:**

> My first non-canon death fic. Sorry about that.  
> Title from _Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem_ by Peter Murphy.

Murray didn’t know much after the shooting stopped. He wasn’t in any pain, but his body felt heavy. Distant. His vision was fuzzy, but he could hear. Hearing was always the last sense to go. He thought touch might be the first. It wasn’t taste, because there was blood in his mouth. He knew that much. It seemed to him that he should be afraid, but he wasn’t. Not when he could hear his friends nearby.

It was Nick’s voice that he heard most plainly, asking Cody where he was hurt. Telling him to stay calm, that it wasn’t serious. Murray had seen Cody fall with a bullet in his shin. He remembered that now. He thought Nick was right, that it wasn’t serious, but he’d blocked the next shot with his own body anyway. Because Cody was on the ground, vulnerable, and Nick was distracted. He’d had time to think that they weren’t as young as they once were, that they couldn’t keep taking these beatings, but he didn’t apply that to himself. It was simply something he had to do for his friends.

Now he was sure it wasn’t a wasted effort. Everything was okay. Nick was taking care of Cody, the bad guys had fled, and he wasn’t in any pain. That was exactly what Murray wanted.

If there had been more time, it might have occurred to him to want other things, too. A hand under his cheek to cushion it from the cold concrete. A soothing voice to tell him that he, too, would be all right. Maybe even a few words of love, like the ones he heard Nick giving to Cody. He might have wanted those things, but they just didn’t cross his mind.

At some point, he realized that he couldn’t see anything anymore. His wavering vision had finally failed, and when a strange voice asked if he was okay, he was unable to find the face that would tell him who it was. He tried to say that he was good, that if Nick and Cody were okay, then he was, too, but the words didn’t come. He heard Cody call his name and then Nick shouted something. They had finally realized he was missing, had probably just noticed him lying on the ground with his own life bleeding away, and he wanted to tell them it was all right. It didn’t hurt.

 _I’m okay,_ he thought he said. _You two worry about each other. I’ll be fine._

The cop saw his lips move, but no sound came out. Then the soft brown eyes went blank and he was gone. A moment later, Nick and Cody were both beside him, trying to put pressure on a wound that had already ceased to bleed, pleading for Murray to hold on, not accepting that he had already let go. That they’d let him slip away unnoticed, as he had so many other times over the last twenty years.

It was no comfort that he never would again.


End file.
